


Starlight in Starling: Andromeda, the Chained Lady

by BardicRaven



Series: Starlight in Starling [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Archery, Astronomy, Bows & Arrows, Captivity, Chains, Constellations, Freedom, Gen, Philosophy, Rock and a Hard Place, poetry in prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:11:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2891609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arrows, not a sword, will cut through her chains, free her from her bondage as surely as they have put her there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starlight in Starling: Andromeda, the Chained Lady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> _for atlashearts, without whose words this story would not have been written... again, my thanks for letting me play_

_She’s a runaway fathers’ daughter, and if there’s one thing she’s inherited from her predecessor, it’s that she runs away too. She ran from Vegas, she ran from her mother, she ran from the life that lay ahead of her._

_She rolled the gold dice on a humid summer night, strobe beats banging a rhythm through her skull, her heart pounding a beat similar to the clatter of vodka shots being slammed drunkenly on granite._

_The dice glittered **go**._

_So she went._

_She took her laptop and some clothes, and she ran, all the while her algorithmic heart frantically rushed through data._

_She made it to the world of Starling City, so different from her home._

##### from 'Vega' by atlashearts

***********

Once there, she met a man.

A Dream.

A Crusade.

And found herself as captivated as any prisoner.

She is not chained to a rock, but an office chair, and she is held captive by her choices, not her betrayals, but that makes her no less a prisoner for all that.

A man will come to save her one day, presuming, of course, that his own choices do not kill him first.

Arrows, not a sword, will cut through her chains, free her from her bondage as surely as they have put her there.

A man in hunter's green, a bow ever-present in his hand, firm in his convictions that it is both possible and desirable to save his dying city.

He is both her savior and her jailer.

It is he that said 'join me' in tilting at windmills in the night.

It is he who will free her from the realms of the ordinary.

It is he who has allowed and enabled her to discover the strength she never knew she had inside.

It is he who asks her to throw those golden dice every night - her heart against his life.

It is he who asks her to have the courage to listen - even while he dies.

So, yes, it is truth that says that Felicity Smoak lives her life in chains, literally between a rock and a hard place, but it also truth that says that she could free herself any time she chose to do so, and run away, free, under starlit skies.

The fact that she has not, that instead she chooses to roll those golden dice each night for his salvation and the salvation of his city, says something very powerful about them both.

Perhaps it simply that they are mad, mad as march hares under the starlit skies.

Perhaps it is that they know they have chosen their chains, chosen their crusades, and it is that choice that frees them even as it prisons them, under the star-lit skies.

Perhaps they know no other way to stop themselves from running, or at least make it running to something, someone, greater than themselves, instead of running away, from themselves, from their past, from their future, all under the star-lit skies.

**Author's Note:**

> ##### Again, not the beginning, but far from the end.
> 
> ##### Write on! :D 
> 
> ##### -B! 


End file.
